


we keep heading in the same direction

by insertcleveracejoke



Series: oh no, not now [4]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, I cant even defend myself, I swear Im trying not to be sappy, Im already working on the next chapter, M/M, also bc Im outraged they mention the possibility of more women wizards, and I couldnt remember any for my life, and never follow through with that, but I am a sappy person, but thats why theyre headcanons after all isnt it, in Equal Rites, probably had to pry them out of his own hands, rincewind looking at potatoes: sharing is caring, second chapter is just Rincewind trying to take care of his overworked bf, so here you are, so look forward to that I guess?, sorry about that, theres an oc here but just bc I needed a student, they are a little different from canon, they talk a little about Twoflower bc ya know honesty, this includes my headcanons about magic, this is just Rincewind and Ponder getting comfortable around each other, ya know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-06 11:34:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16387028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insertcleveracejoke/pseuds/insertcleveracejoke
Summary: t was all a little awkward, of course. Things don't usually go as smoothly as in stories, not even in a world moved by narrativium like Discworld. It takes a little time to settle in a new relationship and even more time to convince yourself no disaster is going to happen if you're as used to the universe itself shooting you down everytime as Rincewind is. Ponder tried to be understanding. It was just natural that he would be wary after everything he went through.So it was a bit of a surprise when he found out Rincewind could be a clingy one if he wanted. Maybe it shouldn't have been. The man did spend a lot of his time near Ponder after all.





	1. youve become my own reflection

It was all a little awkward, of course. Things don't usually go as smoothly as in stories, not even in a world moved by narrativium like Discworld. It takes a little time to settle in a new relationship and even more time to convince yourself no disaster is going to happen if you're as used to the universe itself shooting you down everytime as Rincewind is. Ponder tried to be understanding. It was just natural that he would be wary after everything he went through.

So it was a bit of a surprise when he found out Rincewind could be a clingy one if he wanted. Maybe it shouldn't have been. The man did spend a lot of his time near Ponder after all.

"You don't seem very comfortable", he said closing the door behing himself and looking at Stibbons, who smiled at him from his position sitting on the ground.

"I am, I've got a lot of pillows here. The chair broke and the students are hesitant to try to tame one of the pink ones, they started to bite yesterday, so I sent one of them to the Archancellor to get a new one."

"Poor bloke."

"I know", Ponder grimaced. Better the student than him, though. " 'Afraid you're gonna have to sit on the ground if you stay here, though."

"No problem, I sat in worse places before", Rincewind shrugged with a vaguely horrified look in his face that usually meant he was having Memories. Ponder tapped the floor besides himself and the wizzard sat down, leaning his back against the other's left shoulder and pulling a pillow to his own lap. "What are you doing?"

Ponder, who had startled a little with the touch, smiled and raised his clipboard. "Working on the paperwork. Everyone leaves it to me."

"Hm. Thats unfair."

"You do that too."

"Still."

He chuckled and looked down at the papers, trying to commit the names of everyone who had left it to him to memory. It was easier to remember who hadn't. With a sigh, he pinched the bridge of his nose. Wonder if Brazeneck is still accepting professors? But no. He hadn't accepted their offer at the time and, he thought, glancing at Rincewind, who seemed perfectly content (or, well, as content as he can be) leaning against him, now he wanted to even less.

Distractedly, he reached between them and grabbed Rincewind's hand, his mind focused in his sums but not too focused that he didn't notice the other tensing and not relaxing for a while.

Ponder let it go. Gratefully, Rincewind snuggled a little against him and prepared to take a nap.

 

It happened again a few times - not many; Ponder learned fast. Rincewind seemed uncomfortable with hugs that lasted more than a few seconds and handholding. He liked to lean against him, though, and didn't object to quick touches or kisses. Ponder ended up barely never utilizing that new chair that probably cost his student a few years of his life after he found out if he sat on the ground Rincewind would use him as a pillow, be it by putting his head on his lap or simply snuggling on his side, and though the wizzard sometimes accidentally hit him with a sharp elbow or knee it was rare. In fact, Ponder thought, he acted as someone who had had a lot of experience trying not to hurt someone else.

He tried not to think about it for now.

It didn't work. Ponder wasn't used to not asking questions if he was curious about the answers. It was probably a character flaw, but then again, sooner or later everything was.

"So", he said one day, Rincewind's head pillowed on his shoulder. "Twoflower."

The only reason why the man didn't fall over was because it was a little difficult to do when you're already on the ground. He still tried his best.

"Not subtle, huh?", Rincewind said after he stopped coughing. He was making the same face he made when one of the pink chairs bit him a few days ago (well, Ponder had warned him about the biting, no once could say he hadn't). 

"I don't usually do 'subtle'", he answered. "Doesn't get any answers and the senior wizards just ignore me til I get to the point, when they can ignore me with a little more understanding of why. So. Twoflower."

Rincewind sighed. "What about him?"

Ponder hesitated- what about him, indeed?

"Did you... You and him..." he said in the universal way of people who were too embarassed to finish a sentence. (Actually, not universal. There was a tribe somewhere in the deepest point of Foureck whose reaction to not wanting to finish a sentence was running away the faster they could. Said tradition is, of course, less common in civilized people, who sometimes prefer stabbing.)

"Him and me? Yes."

"Oh."

Another sigh, this time louder. In the Geinger scale of sighs, that one was at least a four. "He was married. His wife knew, he told me later, when I found him again in his country and he was already a widower. I knew it wouldn't work between us. He didn't listen. He never listened. So yes, we had something. We don't anymore."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay", Ponder said, curiosity satisfied, and came back to his clipboard.

 

Magic had a mind of its own. Any wizard and witch with half a functioning brain knew that. You learned fast or you didn't have time to learn at all. So Ponder wasn't surprised, exactly, when he realized his own magic reacted to Rincewind. There were a few precedents of wizards having relationships with other men (Professor Macarona, for instance, and Ponder knew some of his students didn't spend as much time studying or working or HEX as they claimed they did when asked about how sleep-deprived they were) and just about enough of them for him to know it wasn't too irregular. It was still a little embarassing, though.

Rincewind didn't seem to mind.

"Doesn't it prickle?", Ponder asked, watching him play with a few octarine strands of his magic that had refused to vanish after a small spell.

"No, not really. I expected it to, but it doesn't. It's warm, though. And nice."

Ponder kept watching him as his own treatorous magic hummed approvation in a sound that couldn't be heard by humans against Rincewind's fingers. These were full of scars, he noticed, and one or two looked like they had been broken and hadn't healed well. That hadn't been what had called his attention. He knew Rincewind well enough to know there weren't many places in his body lacking scars. 

"Your fingers are nice", Ponder said, resting his chin on the other's shoulder. "Look like a pianist's."

Rincewind snorted. "Yeah, like a pianist would look if pianos liked meat", he said, but his cheeks grew pinker. "You really think that?"

"Yes." Ponder waited until all of of the magic was in one of the hands and grabbed the other, giving it a peck before letting go. "I like it."

"Thanks, man", Rincewind said, as he tended to do when flustered. The other wizard grinned and pretended not to see how his cheeks were pinker now, or how his own magic shone in a brighter shade of octarine for a moment.


	2. is that your soul that you're trying to protect?

The problem with Ponder is that he's always and ever busy. That wasn't an issue with Rincewind, who doesn't mind people being busy when they're not busy trying to get him killed, and who spent most of his time in the HEM building and had now started to bring his boxes of rocks to sort them there. He could recognize the most constant students by name and quirk and they seemed to think of him as they thought of some parts of HEX: A little strange, no one knew why or how was there, but a part of the lab nevertheless. 

The actual problem was when Rincewind realized he probably slept more in a day than Ponder did in four. And that was counting how often he woke up with nightmares.

Oh, Ponder slept every night, all right. But it was usually only for one or two hours and he often woke up with some kind of food stuck to his cheeks. When Rincewind noticed that, he realized that probably was because Ponder only tried to feed himself without it being a mandatory dinner with the senior wizards was when he was so tired his sight started to go dark- not because he didn't want to eat or thought he didn't need to, but because he genuinely forgot to do so until it was so late it was almost early.

Rincewind mentioned it once, carefully in case they didn't have yet the intimacy to talk about that, and Ponder had just given him the tired smile of someone who hasn't gotten a full night of sleep for years and waved him off with 'I just have a lot of work to do'. Rincewind, who could work but only did when he wanted to or had his life threatened, didn't quite understand and knew he didn't need to. What he needed to understand was this: A human being, and some other beings, need sleep and food in order to be able to function without eventually falling over. 

He tried to be sneaky about his small interventions in case Ponder took offense. After a while, for example, he found out that if you left a plate of food on Stibbons' desk while he wasn't paying attention he'd simply start to eat absentmindedly without even noticing, which meant that when he did fall asleep he wouldnt wake up with noodles in his forehead because he'd have already eat them. Rincewind couldn't do much about his workload- Ponder seemed to collect jobs as some collect pins- but what he could do, like doing his own paperwork, reading the memos, and casually reminding the students of the things they could do themselves, was easy after he started. It kept getting more obvious that Ponder basically ran the University himself. It raised interesting questions about what would happen when Ridcully died, but he didn't want these questions answered for at least a few decades. 

Rincewind hadn't wanted Ponder to know about his small interventions. He had a nagging worry that the wizard would get mad if he knew- which wouldn't be very fair; it wasn't that Rincewind didn't trust him to take care of himself, it was just that he trusted Ponder to take care of the most basic needs just enough to keep functioning and no more than that. 

It had sounded better in the back of his mind.

He would feel faintly satisfied later than he had been able to keep that going for a week before Ponder noticed. That satisfaction would be brief when Rincewind remembered the time the wizard had failed to notice the Librarian himself standing behind of him while he worked on some new function of HEX. It was very hard to ignore an oragutan. He had been impressed. It took a serious commitment to what you were doing and self-preservation instincts amazingly weak even among wizards, whose usual approach to dangerous situations was arguing about what, exactly, could be defined as danger.

It took Ponder a few bites to realize he hadn't served the plate full of meat and boiled potatoes on his desk. He stared at it with a vacant expression for a few seconds. "What", he finally said.

"Oh, sir, I think Professor Rincewind left it there for you", said Miss Jones, who had went all the way from the Hub to study in the University and was one of the few women students. 

"Rincewind? Where is he, then?", Ponder frowned. Suddenly he remembered a lot more of meals than he usually ate. And a lot more potatoes. "Wait, don't tell me. He ran."

"Ran for it, sir, as soon as you looked up. A very elegant sprint, sir, if I say it myself."

"I see. Thank you, Jones. Do me a favor and tell him he doesn't need to barricade himself in his room? I think you'll find he must be halfway to the main building... No, he must be in the back of this one."

"May I ask why you think that, sir?"

"Yes, Jones. That's because he thinks I won't look there, you see."

She smiled. "Very clever, sir."

 

He was, in fact, right, but there was no need to be smug about it, Rincewind thought bitterly as he was brought to the lab again and left alone with Ponder.

"Uh", he said, eloquently.

"Thanks for the potatoes", said Stibbons with a faint smile.

"Uh, yeah, you're welcome. Very nourishing, potatoes. A man's best friends, they are. You'd think a man'd miss carrots, maybe, or bread, but just you try getting lost in a desert island, potatoes are the thing."

"I've tried once, actually", Ponder said, "even if 'tried' implies a little more of choice than the situation actually gave. But maybe I wasn't there for enough time."

"Maybe", Rincewind said. He often wished he were somewhere else. At the moment he'd have taken the pink chairs over this conversation, except actually not, because he didn't think Ponder was angry enough to try to bite his head off yet and it was all a matter of priorities.

Stibbons put a hand on his arm. It tingled with latent, comforting magic and he couldn't help but relax under the touch. It was pathetic, he thought, how much power Ponder had over him.

"Thanks", he said, "for more than the potatoes."

Rincewind's expression softened. "No problem", he said, and meant it. "No problem at all, Ponder."


	3. i always hoped that we would intersect, yeah

These are the things that made up Twoflower: A bright smile, small dark eyes that squinted when he beamed, a strong faith in humanity's goodness despite all evidence, smooth skin, soft hands, more faith in Rincewind than he deserved, something that makes you feel better about yourself for just a second if you pay attention, selective deafness related to sarcasm and snarky comments, sweet kisses.

These are the things that make up Ponder: A pointy hat that alone could take a wizard lost in the sea back home with the compasses and rulers tucked into it, the urge to somehow decant the universe to its most basic rules and understand it, a shy smile, brown skin that grows darker when they kiss, fingertips rough from spending hours typing, the quiet cynicism of someone who has seen humanity too often, enough sarcasm to give as good as he gets, overuse of the word 'sir', a fondness towards Rincewind that neither of them quite understand, dark brown eyes, round glasses, fond kisses, exasperation, the silent decision to carry the weight of an entire university on his shoulders...

And where he didn't want to think about Twoflower (because he meant danger, he meant adventure, he meant fear and near-death experiences that still made Rincewind wake up screaming most days even now) he realized he liked to think about Ponder (he meant safety.)

It wasn't that he liked Ponder more than he used to like Twoflower. It was just that he was more comfortable with him. That he was pretty sure that, even if Ponder somehow made him go in an adventure, he'd at the very least admit that it was dangerous and not just assume Rincewind was being paranoid.

It's not paranoia if you've literally been to hell and it wasn't as bad as the rest of your life.

The difference between Ponder and Twoflower was this: Ponder listened. When Rincewind was being sensible, when he was actually being a little paranoid, when he was scared, when he had good or bad ideas, he knew Ponder would listen to all of it and not only what was convenient. Agreeing or desagreeing. 

And, maybe even more important: He'd talk, too.

"So I'm working on an experiment with-"

"Let me guess", Rincewind said, balancing a bowl of food on his legs. It was surprisingly hard to eat on the HEM building's floor. Must have been all the pillows. "Quantum."

"Well, yes. It could be a little dangerous. If I were you, I'd stay in your room this afternoon. It shouldn't reach that far."

"Will probably do that and sort some rocks. I think some of them might be breeding. I don't see how, but I guess it's their business, so. Thanks for the warning too."

Ponder smiled, if a little distractedly. Rincewind knew that look. It meant his mind was at least very far away in this world and at the most in a completely different set of dimensions. The students, through sheer natural selection, had learned to put helmets under their pointy hats when they saw it.

"Hm? Oh, yes, you're welcome."

Rincewind nodded and got out of there as fast as his legs would take him, which was very fast indeed.

 

He didn't come running when he heard a bang but, on his defense, he did come if slowly and relutanctly. 

 

"Oh dear", Rincewind heard Ponder saying as he stood in front of the door, ready to bolt if needed. 

"Everything alright there?"

"Hm? Ah, Rincewind, didn't think you'd be here", he heard surprise. "Do come in. It's not dangerous- well, not much- just avoid the darkened patches of the ground will you?"

He wondered if it was too late to run now. On the other side, if Ponder said it shouldn't be too dangerous, it probably wasn't; but even a little speck of danger had the nasty habit of growing very quickly. Rincewind reached a compromise by standing a few steps closer. "What happened?"

"We're not sure yet, but don't worry", Ponder said, uselessly as that might have been, "we're doing our best to find out."

The students moved as ants inside of the room, quickly fixing the most compromised parts of the architeture (Ponder held that if the gods had given them the power to use magic they probably meant them to also use it to not let their ceiling fall on their heads) and neutralizing a few strands of accumulated magic while the professor stood in the middle of the room with his clipboard leading the efforts while at the same time not using magic at all. Rincewind noticed with a grimace that the blankets and pillows had been blasted by whatever explosion occurred. HEX looked surprisingly intact.

"I'll be in my room if you need me", he said, very purposefully not asking if they wanted help now.

Ponder, who would have probably tried to get a priest to perform an exorcism if Rincewind had done that, gave him a faint smile. "Thanks. I'll probably stop by once we finish this. It might take a while."

"See you then", Rincewind said, quickly doing a strategic exit.

 

When Ponder showed up, hours later, part of his hat was scourched and one of his arms was bandaged. He looked so excited that Rincewind automatically tried to jump out the window- people that excited were usually trying to get him killed. Ponder distractedly held him back by his robes' sleeve with the ease everyone that had to deal with him developed sooner or later.

"So we figured out the problem was that quantum meant we weren't talking the concept of multiverse in consideration and it messed up some of our calculations! We fixed it so it should work now, but I told the students they should go sleep for a few hours before we try again- I think sleep-deprivation definitely contributed to the mistake and-"

"Mmmurgh", said Rincewind.

"Oh, sorry", Ponder let go of his collar. "Anyway, we are going to try tomorrow and I just went to tell you it's probably safe now before I go back to my room and check the calculations again..."

"Uh, no? Didn't you say sleep-deprivation was why you made a mistake?"

"I said that was why the students and I might have forgotten to take some things in consideration", he said defensively. "We should be good now. Also, I can't sleep in my room, it's too full of broken parts of HEX that ended up being rejected and I'm not cleaning that at this time-"

"Sleep here", Rincewind said. "And I mean actual sleep. When was the last time you got more than four hours?"

Ponder paused, his lips silently moving.

"Don't answer. I know, and it was three weeks ago after you drank too much coffee and passed out for thirteen hours after. I don't consider that a good night of sleep even though I suspect you might. Go take a bath and come back so I won't have to worry so much tomorrow."

"I wouldn't want to bother-", Ponder started, a little touched.

"It it were a bother, I'd tell you."

"I don't doubt that", he sighed. "Alright. I'll be back soon."

He felt weirdly touched by the worry. Usually the only thing other wizards that weren't his students said after an explosion was "would you mind keeping that down next time and stop bleeding all over the carpet?" or "Ook". His students were usually too busy trying to fix the damage and plan the next experiment to check on him, which was understandable, but still. It was nice.

He came back thirty minutes later. They laid in the bed, a few inches from each other, and tried to pretend it wasn't that awkward.

Ponder sighed. "Come here."

Rincewind turned on his side to look at him. "Are you okay?", he finally asked. 

"Yes. I got a second degree burn in my arm, but we treated it fast so it should heal nicely". He shrugged and winced when the moviment tugged at burned skin. "There's so much to do, though."

"Not right now."

Ponder smiled. "No, not right now. Really, come here."

Rincewind shuffled and squirmed until his head was resting on the shoulder of the good arm, his arm loosely over Ponder's torso. Carefully, the other wizard put an arm around him. He startled, but didn't tense. Ponder counted it as a win. 

"Thank you", he mumbled. 

"No problem", the wizzard answered, voice muffled on Ponder's shoulder. He sounded comfortable.

Rincewind was all sharp edges and pointy bones, but he was good at not hitting flesh with them accidentally. After they were positioned, he was actually quite cuddly. Ponder felt his own eyelids growing heavy despite himself and pressed his lips on the top of Rincewind's head before closing them.

He woke up six hours later with a screaming wizzard drapped all over him and clinging like a squid. (Ponder had some unfortunate experience that meant he had authority to make that comparison). 

All in all, not a bad night of sleep.


End file.
